The first round of applications and assessments took place during 2000 and early 2001, with briefings from May, applications due by the end of August, and all but one of the assessments completed by the end of January. A review conference took place in mid-March 2001.
Aims and questions
Compared with the JAG project, the second cycle had a more limited set of aims concerned with improving the detail and quality of PACR and highlighting areas for later development. The primary aims were:
• To assess the likely level of applications and identify any reasons for non-application.
• To identify any problems and areas for improvement in implementation.
• To gather feedback on the standards and other issues for later action.
Cycle 2 applied specifically to accreditation; the CPD review and planning process was excluded, although it was expected that some feedback would result because of the requirement in area C of the professional standards for candidates to address their continuing development.
Process
The process focused on implementing the framework and gathering associated feedback and information. The main components were:
• Briefing sessions for potential candidates, which also enabled initial feedback to be gathered on PACR, scheme documents and guidance materials. Briefings were held in London and Somerset, attracting 71 participants.
• Assessor training, carried out in three groups in London, Bristol and Birmingham, with a total of 24 assessors; an initial briefing day was followed four to eight weeks later by a workshop to discuss issues raised by individual applications. Most accreditation committee members also attended an equivalent pair of sessions. These sessions also provided a large amount of feedback on the framework and associated issues.
• The application and assessment process. Eighteen applications were made by the deadline, with one withdrawing reluctantly after advice from the accreditation committee, and another failing to respond to a request to complete the form fully. With one exception assessments were conducted between November 2000 and January 2001, and reviewed by the accreditation committees in February and March. Thirteen candidates were successful and three referred for various reasons (two of these were subsequently successfully reassessed in the following cycle).
• A review, consisting of telephone discussions with candidates, a questionnaire sent to people who had attended briefings but not applied, a review meeting of assessors and accreditation committee representatives, and email discussion with assessors and accreditation committee members. A final review and planning meeting was held by the PACR Co-ordination Committee in May 2001. I was unable to attend this meeting but tabled a report (paper B4).
Findings and issues raised
The key findings and issues raised are outlined below, and discussed in more depth in paper B4.
Further discussion is also provided in paper A3.
Feedback on PACR and on the first full cycle of implementation was on balance positive from all its constituencies. There were some concerns about specific matters of implementation and to a lesser extent design, and some strategic issues were raised concerning the future focus of the framework.
The main issues raised are outlined below.
General issues
A significant issue was raised in respect of what some candidates described as conflicting messages and inconsistent advice. Part of this concerned relatively minor issues such as details of payment or arrangement of visits, but there were also more serious cases relating to the need for their work to demonstrate a conservation ethic (rather than being purely restoration); the emphasis placed on practical conservation work; and confusion between resubmission and referral. Two further issues can be seen to relate to this. First, there was very limited continuity in terms of personnel between the JAG project and the first round of PACR, requiring a large number of people to develop their understanding of the framework quickly. Not unexpectedly, conflicting interpretations arose and some of these escaped into the public domain. Secondly, the PACR-related committee structure - involving overall seven committees, one in each professional body and four in NCCR - appeared to make for slow decision-making and a reluctance to clarify issues quickly.
Candidate support, at least through formal means (workshops, mentors etc), was acknowledged to have been insufficient during the first round. However, in practice most candidates had obtained support via colleagues in the profession, including people who had participated in the trials or were other candidates' assessors. Some candidates commented that the time from submitting their applications (end August) to getting results (February or March) was unjustifiably long.
The position of CPD in relation to PACR applications was seen as unclear, with some candidates submitting CPD reviews (in the requested format) with their applications, while others had CPD-related evidence available at the assessment. The contextual information and narrative provided by the reviews was seen as useful by some accreditation committee members, who requested that reviews were included with all future applications.
Finally, it was clear that many potential candidates were adopting a 'wait and see' policy. The process was seen by some as involved and time-consuming, and the fees of £400 expensive; this suggested that the nature of the credential involved was not fully appreciated. There were also concerns about the value of ACR status, and the limited promotion of PACR that had taken place.
Assessment and assessors
Some assessors had initially been concerned about interpreting the professional standards into different disciplines, as well as the level at which the standards were to be applied. Interpretation was found to be much less of an issue in practice, while the standard of application also became clearer with additional guidance (including use of the Dreyfus novice-to-expert model, as appended to paper C3) and improved understanding of the idea of a practitioner able to take responsibility for his or her practice.
The standard of assessment was generally reported as good. Some issues were raised by the accreditation committees in respect of assessors' comments that were too vague or unsupported by evidence, or where assessors had apparently failed to identify insufficiencies in the evidence put forward. A more significant problem had arisen where differences between a primary assessor and a candidate in terms of personal style and interpretation appeared to have prevented a fair and balanced assessment from being carried out; in the event, the candidate was offered a second assessment at no additional cost, which was taken up (with a successful result) during the following accreditation cycle.
Some concerns were also expressed by assessors and candidates about the role of the accreditation committees. There was no accreditation committee guidance document, and contrary to intentions a significant minority of committee members had had no briefing on PACR. Greater clarity and further training for committee members were felt to be needed.
Documentation and standards
Some improvements were felt to be needed to the scheme documents to clarify, update and where possible simplify the process. The main concerns involved giving clearer guidance to candidates and assessors, and making the application form clearer to understand and complete.
Specific feedback was received on some areas of the professional standards (see document C4 for details of the standards). In particular:
• There was a debate concerning the emphasis that should be placed on practical conservation, with the majority view being that this should be strengthened and the demonstration of practical proficiency made compulsory. A minority view was that proficiency should be achieved either in conservation treatments or preventive conservation, with a working knowledge of the other.
• The standards for preventive conservation were widely viewed as difficult to apply to the work of the majority of conservators. An accepted interpretation during implementation was that the candidate should be able to give advice in the areas concerned, but did not have to show proficiency in for instance setting up environmental protection. Given this interpretation, no difficulties were caused for any of the candidates applying in 2000.
• The general professional criteria were initially felt by some assessors to be difficult to apply. In practice (i.e. as evidenced by assessors' reports and feedback) they appeared to cause few difficulties although some candidates found them hard to interpret and write statements against.
Issues of purpose and coverage
During the year some pressure was noted for PACR to represent proficiency in the conservation of specific classes of objects, a function it was not designed for. Further confusion was caused by the use of accreditation as an informal register, so that professional bodies were giving out names of accredited conservators according to specialism; this was seen as confusing the function of accreditation with the Conservation Register.
As a related point, one professional body had released a disclaimer expressly stating that it could not guarantee the proficiency of accredited members. This had arisen from confusion about the function of accreditation, and a possibly over-cautious approach to professional indemnity prompted by its solicitor. This statement was eventually withdrawn after it was challenged by members as negating the value of accreditation.
Some debate ensued on the distinction between conservation and restoration, and what was actually meant in PACR. In the UK there is a broadly agreed distinction between conservation, which aims to preserve the integrity of the object while arresting deterioration and in some cases aiding interpretation and display, and restoration, which seeks to take an object back to something approaching its original state, period or functional condition (whether for display or use). Conversely, in some other European countries the function of the restaurateur (using the French word) is to undertake conservation treatment, while the conservateur acts as a curator or collections care manager. The term 'conservator-restorer,' used by ICOM and ECCO, embodies a conservation ethic rather than a restoration one. This has resulted in an anomaly in NCCR where 'restoration' as used in PACR refers to the work of the restaurateur, or at least to restoration being carried out within a conservation ethic, while NCCR itself includes organisations that work at least partly from a restoration ethic. Debate on the coverage of PACR was resolved in favour of conservation rather than restoration alone, agreeing that this needed to be clarified in the documentation.
Finally, concerns from conservation scientists and advisers, along with views from practising conservators that PACR should insist on proficiency in practical conservation, prompted interest in creating a stream for interventive conservation and one or more for preventive specialists, advisers, scientists and conservation managers. This was seen as enabling the practical requirements of the current route to be strengthened, while providing more appropriate pathways for conservation professionals who did not undertake practical conservation treatments.
Committee and administrative structures
Concerns arose during the first year of operation that the PACR organisational structure and administrative arrangements (see figure 1 in chapter 1.1) were inefficient. The lack of a central office to handle administrative functions meant that administration was being taken on by the professional bodies' offices and voluntarily by individual committee members, resulting in duplication of effort and inconsistent messages; parallel with this, lack of clarity about the different responsibilities of NCCR, the PSB and the PACR co-ordination committee was causing communication problems, with the chair of the latter commenting that "decision-making is slow and contentious issues can be bounced between committees and misunderstandings easily arise" (Neville 2001, p6). In particular it was thought that committees could make greater use of email, and there was some support for an employed co-ordinator and to a lesser extent (and more contentiously) a centralised office.
Decisions
My recommendations at the end of the second cycle are presented in paper B4.
One of the first actions that was taken was to revise the documents to improve clarity and consistency, and provide additional guidance on the need to demonstrate current or past proficiency in practical conservation. The CPD review document was also included as part of the application form to ensure that candidates completed it when applying. A new guidance document for accreditation committee members was also produced; as with all PACR documents this was made publicly available, and assessors and candidates encouraged to read it. The revised documents (as included in annex C) were made available in May 2001 for the new round of applications.
It was agreed to look into the possibility of establishing a route for conservation advisers, scientists, managers and others not involved directly in the treatment of objects, and incorporate the findings into the standards review. The review itself was postponed to 2002, although in areas where misunderstandings had occurred further guidance was provided for candidates and assessors.
No changes were made to committee structures, but the former chair of the PACR co-ordination committee was appointed as a part-time co-ordinator for PACR, and funding sought for a training officer to take over and increase the briefings and training sessions that were being carried out by me and by some of the committee members.
Outstanding issues
A number of operational issues were left unresolved at the end of the second cycle, including means of providing individual feedback to assessors, particularly where problems had occurred with assessments, improving scheme administration, and the composition of the accreditation committees.
The UKIC's accreditation committee structure, which for the second cycle comprised a member and a deputy from each of 12 specialist sections, was generally agreed to suffer from difficulties in reaching consensus and problems with non-accredited conservators being included in its membership. A need was also apparent for better communication between committee and assessors.
As noted at the end of the trial, support for would-be candidates was still limited, and although briefings had been held these were limited and partly reliant on external funding. Mentoring and arrangement of contacts with successful candidates was identified as needed for future application rounds.
No progress had been achieved towards convergence between the professional standards and the CHNTO occupational standards, although a number of factors including an impending review of National Training Organisations, new developments within the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, and delays to reviewing the PACR standards made this difficult in the short term. It was now generally accepted (including within CHNTO) that the conservation NVQs at levels 4 and 5 had been unsuccessful, and therefore thought likely that continued QCA development funding for conservation standards would rely on a case being made that they were being used in PACR.
Little further work had been done to relate PACR either to qualifications and entry routes in the UK, or to European developments. This was not seen as an immediate priority, other than where individual universities or providers of internships used PACR standards to shape training, although it was identified as an area needing further investigation. I produced a discussion paper relating to this area that was distributed to key people in the conservation community, and later adapted to become paper A7.